Dissolution
On a recent day, during oracle porch-time, I shared with Leela the intricate details of my parents' deaths.
Each of them died suddenly, here one minute, gone the next, no warning, no preparation, both under 50.
"Wow. You really carry the codes that it can all dissolve in an instant."
Yes.
Her phrasing showed me the other side of something I've known, but been wary to claim, about my field.
Those who are in my field experience their problems dissolving. Not solving, but dissolving, like they were never there. Most memorably, a friend was distressed about a late bill notice she'd gotten in the mail, so I was on zoom to support her while she called them. Once they were on the phone, she realized it had never been her name on the envelope.
What I realized when Leela said it this way is that for me, if the greatest love in my life can be gone in an instant, why not the largest challenge, the biggest fear, the fiercest anger, the violent impulses? What is me? What is anything? If my parents can disappear into thin air, why can't anything else?
Anything can, it can all become nothing out of nowhere. Everything came from nothing, everything returns to nothing, that means anything of this moment might dissolve and disappear at any moment.
Those who want this to be magic will miss the mundane magic here—that if I want this junk in my yard to disappear, it's magical how I light up a rectangle and a pair of real humans bring a huge truck and all the junk is gone with just a little more touching of that rectangle.
And I cannot hold one side without holding the other side, that's how I came to see problems dissolve before my eyes, first went my loves.
First, love dissolved before my eyes, again and again, human life ended and left chasms, out of nowhere, we had nothing. I came to relate to all I loved as though it were on the verge of nothingness. It's a profound intimacy.
It bled into the way my problems were on the verge of nothingness. I have a problem, can I really know that that's true? How much of a problem is this if I am on the verge of nothingness, myself? What if I will live only through this day, or this week, or only for the next five years? How big of a problem is this, really?
In light of death, especially, of my mother's death, it seemed life had few problems to offer me, indeed. What was I worried about, before my mother's soul was stolen away in the dead of night, my teenage siblings left living in a house nobody owned? This small inconvenience, which now makes me laugh, until once again I am crying, because there is no world anymore, so what in the world could upset me?
Secure detachment: I won it the hard way. Not in medicine ceremonies, but on life's streets, eating what I was served until I threw up, until I was force-fed more, until crying didn't phase me anymore, just a normal part of the day.
What else could life be but a constant threat that it all goes away? Existence IS the threat of non-existence.
And now, will this everpresent threat lead me to fear for the next moment or treasure the one that's here?
With it all on the verge of dissolving, how can I have everything I value and lose everything I don't, right fucking now?
